Meme Kanserli Hastalarda Plazmadan Metabolomik Yöntemlerle Beyin Metastazı Erken Tespiti İçin Belirteç Saptama

Abstract

The aim of this study was to identify markers for the early diagnosis of brain metastasis by metabolomic methods in breast cancer patients. A total of 88 breast cancer patients with distant metastases were included in the study during their follow-up at Hacettepe University Oncology Hospital between 2017 and 2018. The patients were divided into two groups according to their metastasis status as patients with brain metastases and patients with distant metastases without any brain metastases. The distant organ metastases were examined in four basic categories: brain, bone, visceral organs, and soft tissue. Demographic characteristics of the patients (age, height, weight, menopausal status, and presence of other cancer types), the treatments they received (chemotherapy regimens, any adjuvant treatments, radiotherapy regimens, and the type of breast surgery the patients underwent), and the pathological examination findings (histological subtype, ER / PR status, HER2 status, PNI / LVI / ECE status, and the tumor grade) were retrospectively retrieved from the medical records. For metabolomic analyses, LC-qTOF-MS and GC-MS analysis methods were used. In all analyzes, the statistical significance limit for the difference between the groups was accepted as p <0.05. A total of 79 metabolites were identified by the GC-MS analysis. Of these, 11 of them (alanine, sphingosine, fructose, fumaric acid, glycine, lactic acid, phenylalanine, pyroglutamic acid, serine, threonine, and valine) were found at statistically significantly higher levels in the patient group with brain metastases (p<0.05). LC-qTOF-MS analysis identified 47 metabolites with statistically significant results between the two groups. Compared to the earlier studies, some of these metabolites have just been demonstrated in our study although some of them have been identified and reported previously. Although these results need to be confirmed with further large-scale studies, they are promising in the sense that an early diagnosis of the brain metastasis by detection of a marker in the serum will allow for initiating the treatment earlier.